Authentication

Token-based Authentication

The validity period of a token is 24 hours. When using a token for authentication, cache it to prevent frequently calling the IAM API used to obtain a user token.

A token specifies temporary permissions in a computer system. During API authentication using a token, the token is added to a request to get permissions for calling the API.

When calling the API to obtain a user token, you must set auth.scope in the request body to project.

{ 
    "auth": { 
        "identity": { 
            "methods": [ 
                "password" 
            ], 
            "password": { 
                "user": { 
                    "name": "username", 
                    "password": "********", 
                    "domain": { 
                        "name": "domainname" 
                    } 
                } 
            } 
        }, 
        "scope": { 
            "project": { 
                "id": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" 
            } 
        } 
    } 
}

After a token is obtained, the X-Auth-Token header field must be added to requests to specify the token when calling other APIs, for example, the API used to query a connection list. For example, if the token is ABCDEFJ...., X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ.... can be added to a request as follows:

GET https://{{endpoint}}/v1/{project_id}/connections
Content-Type: application/json
X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ....

AK/SK-based Authentication

AK/SK-based authentication supports API requests with a body not larger than 12 MB. For API requests with a larger body, token-based authentication is recommended.

In AK/SK-based authentication, AK/SK is used to sign requests and the signature is then added to the requests for authentication.

• AK: access key ID, which is a unique identifier used in conjunction with a secret access key to sign requests cryptographically.
• SK: secret access key used in conjunction with an AK to sign requests cryptographically. It identifies a request sender and prevents the request from being modified.

To obtain an access key, perform the following steps:

Users in the AP-Kuala Lumpur-OP6 region are virtual users authorized by federated authentication to access the cloud system, rather than real users in the cloud system. Therefore, you need to contact the administrator to obtain the AK/SK in the AP-Kuala Lumpur-OP6 region.

In AK/SK-based authentication, you can use an AK/SK to sign requests based on the signature algorithm or use the signing SDK to sign requests. For details about how to sign requests and use the signing SDK, see API Request Signing Guide.

The signing SDKs are only used for signing requests and different from the SDKs provided by services.